


Sans Voir

by CeleritasSagittae



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dragon Age Remix Fest 2017, Gen, In fact this isn't really even friendship, Mind the ampersand, Remix, Templar Training, so much as it is an object lesson in patient forbearance with lightly gritted teet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 23:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16942845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CeleritasSagittae/pseuds/CeleritasSagittae
Summary: Cullen didn’t think worse of Alistair because he was a bastard.  He thought worse of him because he was bloody annoying--and also, currently, screaming as if on fire.





	Sans Voir

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skogr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skogr/gifts).
  * Inspired by [[Untitled]](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/439515) by skogr. 



The Maker’s servants did not cry.

Oh, Cullen supposed they _might_ , at a particularly beautiful recitation of the Chant, as the music swelled with each sacred word, but not as a general rule.

They _certainly_ did not cry because their beds were cold without Mother and Father and Mia and Bran and Rosalie, and too narrow, and they somehow missed their homes more than they wanted to serve the Maker, even though they _knew_ that wasn’t the case, not really.  So Cullen was left to choke his sobs into his pillow, praying he was quiet enough that nobody would notice, no one would tease him later, because he’d _begged_ for this opportunity and he wasn’t going to let anyone take it from him. Maker’s sake, he was thirteen, nearly a man!  He was too grown to be homesick!

He sucked in a deep breath as quietly as he could, and let it out slowly, but his chest still shuddered with hiccoughs strong enough to burn, and that only made it _worse_.  Cullen curled in on himself and pinched his nose shut, just as the bastard in the bunk above him began screaming.

It wasn’t that Cullen didn’t know his name—Maker knew the Revered Mother used it often enough—it was just that that was what all the other initiates called him.  Truth be told, he didn’t even realize it was meant as a pejorative the first couple of times he’d heard it—there were three or four bastards in Honnleath, and no one ever thought worse of them for it—but apparently it was different when you were a noble’s.

 _Cullen_ still didn’t think worse of him for it.  He thought worse of Alistair because he was _bloody annoying_ , and also, currently screaming as if on fire.  (The bastard was not very good at following Andraste’s example, Cullen had found.)

At least there was now a reasonable excuse for Cullen’s face to be stuffed into his pillow when the brothers came running into the dormitory, demanding to know what was the matter.  After they left, he cautiously lifted his head to hear the other initiates cursing the bastard, and his mulish reply: “Oh, come on, it’s not as if anyone was actually asleep yet, anyway.”

But the next morning, everyone was talking about how the bastard had started screaming _again_ , because he thought it was _funny_ , and there was nary a word about Cullen.

Of course there wasn’t. Cullen had been very quiet, after all. No one could have overheard him.

* * *

It took Cullen months to piece together his theory on why he found the bastard so infuriating.  It wasn’t so much that he acted out (well, perhaps it was, but that was beside the point); it was that he insisted on dragging everyone else into it.  That, and it seemed there was _nothing_ that could induce him to stop!  Skipped meals, mess duty, even raps on the knuckles—all of them slid off him like water from a duck’s back.

The more he observed, the more Cullen knew this to be true.  After the incident with the spoons in the mess, he watched, almost eagerly, for the inevitable.  Plenty of initiates failed out of training, after all, and even the nobles’ sons were sometimes called into private conferences that left them shamefaced, rumors swirling after them that their parents had been summoned _all the way from Denerim_ , _just_ to lecture them on dishonour and the family name. Surely someone— _anyone_ —would realize what a disruptive force the bastard was, and mete out a consequence that actually _took_ —preferably, one that removed him from the templars entirely.

But the inevitable never came.

It wasn’t until after he came back from scrubbing the entire Chantry floor with a brush broad as a hand, and caught not a day later for doodling in the margins of his primer instead of copying the dictation on possession like everyone else, that the truth of the matter finally dawned on Cullen.

Alistair was untouchable.

He had no family, so there was no family for him to dishonour, but whatever noble had given him over to the Chantry was powerful enough that they couldn’t just kick him out. So he could do _absolutely anything he wanted_ , and face no consequences worse than a bit of menial labor.  Worse still, the bastard _knew_ it.

And in that moment, Cullen _hated_ him.

* * *

Cullen finally lost his temper after the bastard nearly managed to drag him down to his level.  It was wrong of him, he knew—a templar was supposed to have will over his emotions—but Cullen was still an initiate, so perhaps he could be forgiven.  And it wasn’t as if he was unprovoked.

It began thus: Cullen happened to be standing next to Alistair during Vespers.  He never sang on key—something else Cullen was convinced was deliberate—but this time, the bastard had taken it to the next level. Somehow—and Cullen _knew_ he had to have practiced this—he was singing (for a very loose definition of the word) each of the lines of the Chant—only he started one syllable too late, and kept going, making all the emphases wrong and making it _that_ much harder to follow along properly.  He took a deep breath and started singing more loudly, but that only seemed to encourage the bastard, louder and louder until suddenly the music had stopped and they moved onto the next part of their prayers.

Of _course_ he’d learnt it for all of Vespers, though, and probably Matins, too, and Maker knew what else…  It would have been impressive, except for the part where it kept throwing Cullen off, as he desperately tried to remember the right responses, _and_ not be drowned out by the caterwauling in his left ear, _and_ keep his hands from straying to his ears.  He _would_ sing the Chant correctly, to the Maker’s approval.   _No one_ would believe he didn’t deserve to be here.

By the time the Sister leading worship pronounced the last benediction, Cullen was red from the effort, halfway to tears in frustration, and ready to introduce the bastard’s face to his fist.  But he somehow managed to restrain himself, and instead quietly informed one of the Brothers of the source of his distraction.

He took no small amount of consolation when he saw the bastard get pulled aside.   _Please, please_ , he prayed, _let this be the time something actually happens to him_.

Not five minutes later, though, the bastard was strolling back through the cloister with a little smirk on his face, and Cullen had finally had enough.  He planted himself right in the bastard’s path, and prepared for a confrontation.

Instead, he had the singular misfortune of being bowled over by an initiate who apparently _also_ did not have a lick of situational awareness. “Watch where you’re going!” he snarled under his breath after he’d picked himself up.

“Wow,” said the bastard. “Who pissed in _your_ porridge this morning?”

“ _Stop_ it,” Cullen bit out.  “You know _exactly_ what you did.”

Alistair’s face was the very picture of innocence.  “What, at Vespers?  I thought I was helping!  The Knight-Captain’s always nattering on at us about focus…”

“You think you’re _so funny_ , don’t you?”

“As a matter of fact, yes!”

Cullen folded his arms and gave the bastard his best glower.  “Joke all you want, but leave those of us who actually care about the Maker’s will alone.  Just because _you_ can’t be kicked out of the Templars doesn’t mean the rest of us are so fortunate.”

“ _Fortunate_?”  He laughed, and clapped Cullen hard on the back.  “That’s a _good_ one!  I didn’t know you had it in you!”

“What?”

But Alistair had already left—in the direction of the kitchens.   _He must have gotten mess duty again_ , he faintly realized, but the glimmer of pride in his breast at the bastard’s comeuppance was rapidly waning.

It wasn’t until Cullen was kneeling down for his bedtime prayers that the answer came to him. “Maker’s breath, he was serious?”

He ran quickly through the prayers his mother had taught him, then lay down, staring up at the knots on the bunk above him, and turned the matter over in his mind.  He’d known, in an academic sort of sense, that not everyone who trained at the abbey had a choice in joining the Templars—nearly half the initiates he was training with were promised at too young an age to have much of a say.  But being chosen was such an honor!  How could anyone wish otherwise?

Cullen remembered _begging_ the templars at the chantry in Honnleath, the long, painful talks with Mother and Father… and how horrid were the thoughts that crept into his mind, late at night, when he despaired of never getting the chance to serve.

And suddenly, a ball of guilt formed in his stomach as Cullen understood.

“Oh, Maker, _no_ ,” he groaned.  How could he have been so wrong?

* * *

Two days later, Cullen was standing as if at attention as he waited for the initiate in front of him to finish speaking with the Chanter.   _Like lancing a boil_ , Mother always used to say, but that didn’t make it any less painful.   _I have sinned_ , he would begin, running the words over in his mind to make them smart less, but that wasn’t quite true.  The bastard— _Alistair_ —was still making things worse for those who truly did want to be here, and the Revered Mother wanted to be made aware of such things.  Maker, what was he even repenting of, anyway?

The initiate hastily walked past him with a nod, and Cullen swallowed nervously.  “Best get it over with quickly, then,” he muttered, and stepped forward.  It was Chanter Bridget today, who was young enough that half the older boys carried on about her in a frankly shameful manner, but had always reminded Cullen too much of his maiden aunt in Southmarch—sharp-eyed and close-lipped, but still merry.

“Chanter,” said Cullen, trying to think of a suitably grown-up word for his feelings, “I’m… troubled. I’m afraid I’ve wronged someone, but I’m not sure how, and I’m not even sure I’ve done anything wrong.  No—I _know_ I’m doing the right thing, but it’s hurting someone along the way, and it’d be one thing if he were wicked…”  He broke off, flushing.  His accent always seemed to come out worse during confession… but at least the Chanters never asked him to repeat himself.

“ _All_ men are the work of our Maker’s Hands, from the lowest slaves to the highest kings,” the Chanter replied.

“Right,” Cullen said hastily.  “And I understand that, but then what?  He _is_ a pest, even if he doesn’t… well, I don’t _know_ anymore if he does mean harm.  But either way he causes it!  So why should I feel bad about what happens to him?”

“The one who repents, who has faith, and boasts not, nor gloats over the misfortunes of the weak, but takes delight in the Maker’s law and creations, she shall know the peace of the Maker’s benediction.”

Her emphasis on “gloat” was gentle, but the words still felt like a slap to the face.  There _had_ been… considerable amounts of gloating in the past, and while he wouldn’t exactly call the bastard _weak_ … he didn’t have any allies at Bournshire either.  “How do I make amends?”

* * *

Chanter Bridget’s conversation with him remained in Cullen’s head for weeks afterwards, but it was difficult trying to get a word in with Thedas’s most obnoxious initiate, especially if he _didn’t_ actually want to snap at him.  Besides, their daily schedule was already quite regimented, and that was _before_ the various punishments that took Alistair away from the rest of them.  So Cullen was hardly avoiding him.

But by the time another opportunity for confession arose, Cullen hung back and knew he’d failed.  “Though the lands suffer a thousand wrongs, the Maker yet notices the smallest of deeds,” the Chanter had told him.  It didn’t matter that no one else wanted to speak to the bastard.  And it didn’t matter that Cullen didn’t want to, either.  There had to be _something_ he could do.

It took another two weeks of waiting—for the right opportunity, Cullen assured himself, but it did roll around.  The season’s courier had arrived, with all the letters and gifts and other things that the boys’ families could send them, just infrequent enough not to distract them. Cullen stood in line—and Maker, he’d forgotten to get a letter ready; he’d have to write one for next time—and thanked the courier when he received a small stack of letters from Father and Mia. Just as he opened the seal to the first letter, too eager to hear how they were doing to return to the dormitories, he heard Alistair’s name called.

Cullen skimmed over the letter, flicking his glance up to see what would happen.  It was the first evidence he’d ever seen of the existence of someone who actually cared about the bastard, he realized with shame, and he wanted to see what would happen.

A paragraph after he saw Alistair take the letter from the courier, Cullen caught a fluttering movement in the corner of his eye.  The letter had somehow landed in the hearth.

There was no time for thought.  Cullen dropped the letters in his hand, dove down, and rescued the thing, stomping on it a few times to extinguish it… then looked up to see an utterly incredulous Alistair above him.

“You, er,” said Cullen, rising from the floor and trying to dust the soot from his hands.  “You dropped this.”

Alistair took the letter and looked it up and down.  “Oh, I did? Thanks!”  And he threw it farther into the hearth, where it caught flame immediately.

“Y-you…” Cullen spluttered. “What in Andraste’s name was _that_ for?  It _was_ your letter, wasn’t it?”

“No, it was addressed to one of the three _other_ Alistairs here.”

“Someone cares about you enough to write to you and—”

“Ha!  Wonder how I wound up here, then?”

“What?” said Cullen.

Alistair sighed and stalked off, but this time Cullen hurried after him.  “What are you still doing here?” he asked.  “Don’t you have a priest to impress?”

“No, I—I’m trying to help.”

“Oh, great!  I get to be someone else’s pity project.  Who put you up to it, I wonder?”

“Nobody!” he cried, which was mostly true.  “Argh! Never mind; I don’t even know why I bothered.”

“Nobody does,” Alistair muttered.

* * *

“What about your mother?” Cullen asked Alistair in the middle of a sparring session.

“Huh?”

He checked back to make sure the Knight-Captain was still at the other end of the field.  “I have a theory,” he said.  “The letter was from your father, only he doesn’t really care for you because he sent you here instead of whatever you actually wanted—or maybe it was the other way around if your mother was the noble.  But… what about the other parent?  Have you heard from them at all?”

“Not exactly,” said Alistair.  “For some reason I can’t quite fathom, the Chantry isn’t fond of it when you try and get in touch with the dead.”

“I…”

Alistair landed a point. They reset their stances, tapped, and started again.

“Oh, Maker, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t bother,” said Alistair.  “It’s not as if I knew her.”

“What about… grandparents? Or any aunts or uncles?”  Cullen blocked a strike, before trying the V-step they’d been taught yesterday.  “I just wanted you to know that everybody in Honnleath cared more about whether you can pitch hay than who your parents are.  Your… common family probably feels the same way.”

“Well, that would have been _wonderful_ to know four years ago,” said Alistair, yielding to Cullen’s strike.  “I’ll just have my army of spies track them all down, shall I?”

Cullen groaned.

“Why do you even care?”

The Knight-Captain called for them to halt, so Cullen wasn’t able to answer him until they were in the line for the washbasin.  “Life here is difficult enough without a family’s support,” he said quietly.

“The foundlings don’t seem to mind,” Alistair replied.

* * *

The day after Satinalia, Cullen had learned, was the one day the Chantry encouraged families to visit, and allowed them to take the initiates off grounds for the day. Father’s last letter already included an apology that no one would be able to make it, but Cullen already knew. Travel in winter was hard enough, and the coin that would have been spent on travel would serve better patching the barn roof.  He didn’t mind.  This was what he wanted, after all.

And he’d received already received his presents, as well—a set of whittled chess pieces, and three woolen pairs of socks, much better than the standard issue set they’d gotten so far. A respectful conversation with the Knight-Captain netted Cullen with a spare board and the ink to mark the knights’ spaces.  Cullen then considered trying for a correspondence game with Mia, but quickly disabused himself of the notion when he came back from Compline to find the pieces rearranged for a “grand cavalry charge.”

He may have yelled at Alistair for that one.

Alistair, for his part, was lurking in the hall when Cullen and many of the other recruits whose families couldn’t make it for Satinalia received their presents, but he was never called forward.  The past two courier stops had yielded him no letters, and Cullen had thought he looked satisfied at the thought, but now he wondered.

Cullen decided he really needed only two pairs of the socks.

“Thanks?” Alistair said on Satinalia, as Cullen handed him the gift.

“The wool’s softer. Less hopping around on one foot trying to scratch the other.”

“And more standing at attention,” he grumbled.

“It was the right thing to do,” Cullen muttered in reply.

Alistair shrugged.

“Say… do you know if your father’s stopping by tomorrow?”

“He’s not actually my father,” said Alistair, “but no, I don’t.  He did the past two years, but maybe he’s finally taken the hint.”  He sounded a good deal sadder than Cullen expected he thought.

Cullen frowned, and sent out a brief prayer that he hadn’t misjudged this horribly.  “Honnleath’s too far, so I expect I’ll be playing chess in the main hall if the Revered Mother truly wants this to be a day of leisure. I’d prefer not to play against myself.”

Alistair’s eyes widened and he nodded solemnly.  “I understand.   _I’d_ prefer not to play against you either… but, well, the Maker asks sacrifices of us all.”

“What?  Are you playing chess with me tomorrow or not?”

“Are you asking me to?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” said Alistair, and Cullen briefly wanted to throttle him.  “Maybe.”

The next day, though, as the initiates and their families reunited, however temporarily, and filed their way out of the abbey, Alistair found him setting up the board.  “So,” he said, almost too casually.  “How do you actually play chess?”

“You… don’t know how to play,” said Cullen.

“No, the stable’s grandmaster was put to pasture just before I was born, and all the mabari preferred checkers.”

 _Blessed Andraste, grant me strength._  “I’ll teach you how,” Cullen said, and settled in for a long day of waiting for Alistair’s not-father to arrive.


End file.
